


David

by annaloverofarendale



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: M/M, Tony's brother, kind of character death, themes of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaloverofarendale/pseuds/annaloverofarendale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Wonder was the good student, the perfect son. But beyond that, he was a brother. And if we know anything from AD, family matters, and when they're gone, they leave a hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	David

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cress221](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cress221/gifts).



Tony used to think David was the sun. Until the first day of fifth grade, when Miss Garner excitedly told the class how lucky they were to have “David Wonder’s little brother” in their class. She spent the next fifteen minutes telling stories about how smart, clever, and athletic David was when he was in her class, three years earlier. Tony sat there, slinking lower and lower in his chair. When it was all done and over with, Tony made a promise to himself. He would find something he was better at than David.

He started making lists in his school notebook. Sports were out. David could play tennis, baseball, basketball, and football. School? Well, Tony liked reading. But that didn’t feel like enough.

That night, he and David and their parents were watching television when The Last Magician came on. And Tony instantly knows, this is what he wants to do. This will be his one thing, this will make him special, this will be how the world will remember Tony Wonder.

And perfect David is perfect about it, as always. He drives Tony to the hobby shop, he sits patiently and claps through every failed trick, every failed performance. In the heat of his humiliation and frustration, Tony almost wishes he could see David fall from grace. Almost. 

But apparently, that almost wish tempted fate enough. 

Now, David sometimes has full days when he doesn’t leave the couch. Tony’s in high school now, and he feels like he should know what to do, but he doesn’t. He sits next to David sometimes, just listening to him breathe.

Suddenly, when Tony is a senior, everything seems better for a while. David found an apartment, David found a girlfriend, David is proposing to his girlfriend, David is getting married. And the wedding is so beautiful, and everyone is smiling again. David’s father in law got him a job, something Tony finds excruciatingly dull, with taxes and property laws and other stuff, but it makes David so happy, and it’s such a change from the couch days, that Tony finds himself asking questions and feigning interest.

If the voice in the back of his head calls it a penance for the almost wish, Tony ignores it.

Tony’s world shatters two years later, when he gets a phone call at four am. He drives through the night to get home in time for the funeral. 

A week later, a drunk Karen kisses him while crying, and he kisses back. Because he’s angry at David, and she’s missing David and probably angry at him too. And it’s so much easier to be miserable together than face the possibility that they’ll move on apart. Tony doesn’t want to move on. He just wants his brother back.

He and Karen are off and on fuck buddies for the next decade. And yeah, it’s messed up. But it’s what they both deserve.

It’s years later when Gob, wild, passionate, affectionate Gob, nervously slides Tony a postcard and a pair of plane tickets. At first Tony doesn’t get it, but then he reads the postcard, Gob’s messy handwriting a bit of a challenge to decipher. And then there’s a lump in his throat, and Gob is racing forward, terrified that he’s choking again. But it’s just twenty years world of tears tumbling out at once, and he’s a sobbing mess. 

Gob gently leads him to the couch, and for once, is silent as he holds Tony through the sobs. When Tony starts to slow down, Gob just whispers that they don’t have to go, it’s okay, it was a dumb idea anyway. And that sets Tony off again, and it’s a little while longer before he can say that no, he wants to go, needs to go. That it was the best idea. Even though Tony’s sure that he looks like a mess, what with all the crying, Gob kisses him anyway.

Tony and Gob are surprisingly okay at packing. Tony always gets nervous and overpacks, Gob always gets distracted and under packs, and their flaws, like they often do, balance each other out. 

Gob, understandably, gets cagy on airplanes. But for this ride, he is doting on Tony for the fourteen hours they are in the air. He holds his hand the entire time. And when they land, Tony knows that Gob is serious when he tells Tony that there’s still time to turn back now. If Tony said he wanted to turn back, he knows Gob would walk back into the airplane and sit down for another fourteen hours. Of course, he would have to be told by the pilot that the flight back home was a different plane, but anyway- Tony just smiles and says that he’s ready.

Their hotel is opulent. The food is amazing. But Tony can’t enjoy it until they do what they came here to do. 

The museum has guides, the woman at the front desk offered. But Tony just shakes his head and squeezes Gob’s hand a little tighter. They weave through the crowds until-

Tony sees a flash of sculpted marble and for a moment he can’t breathe. 

Michelangelo's David is, like Tony’s David, perfect. 

Only Michelangelo’s David is still here. 

Tony never liked visiting David’s grave. Cemeteries freak him out, and besides, it never felt like David was really there. But here? Thousands of miles from where David was buried, where David lived, somewhere he had never even been before? 

This feels... perfect. 

And Gob is still holding his hand when Tony starts pulling them closer, up towards the front of the crowd. Tony gets to the base of the statue, and smiles. 

“Hey David. Long time no see, hey? Well... This is Gob.”

Gob says hello, and really, thank god for Gob Bluth’s inability to feel shame or embarrassment. Because he says hello just right, like a normal conversation, like he’s actually meeting Tony’s brother. And it's perfect. And of course it's perfect.

It’s about David. 

But Tony realizes, when he's standing literally under David's shadow, in an Italian museum, that somewhere along the way, he stopped feeling like he needed to be perfect. That maybe David wasn't perfect either. It was just loving him, lame as that sounds, that made him seem like flawless, seamless marble. And maybe that's not the right way to love someone.

Gob's hand is sticky, and he's bouncing from foot to foot ever so slightly. 

Gob flew him to Italy because he stumbled upon a postcard that described the statue of David that was being exhibited. 

And if it's a bit weird to propose to your boyfriend in front of the personification of your dead brother- then weird is perfect in Tony's book.


End file.
